


Appears in Spring

by CrookedRain_CrookedRain (OurFontIsBigger)



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 13:26:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13881804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurFontIsBigger/pseuds/CrookedRain_CrookedRain
Summary: All the quiet morning movements and the sun ticking higher, the ring of the spoon against the mug. The tiny hotel kettle sputtering to life and Fred’s big fingers ripping apart packets of sugar felt a lot like love.





	Appears in Spring

**Author's Note:**

> // Standard Disclaimer //
> 
> This is a work of fiction and not intended to represent or speculate on the real lives of any person, it's just using their likenesses to write a story.

**Why You Are the Way You Are**

In the evening, before Paul leaves his hotel room, he condenses eleven years into several minutes stood in front of the mirror knocking out the whole history in his head. Rolling his sleeves up and then unrolling them. Smoothing, readjusting and rolling them back up again. How tired he looks or maybe it’s the light, a fixed spot above the mirror, threatening to reveal something previously hidden, a new crease in his skin or a thinning of hair. He moves slightly to the side, out of its reach. Eleven years, sees the number writ large, the graphic potential of those two stark lines. More than a decade. He was twenty-nine when it ended and he’s forty now. 

Down at the bar the years seem to have shifted and settled Fred into his body. There’s a fixedness about him, a stability. A new solidness in his muscular forearms, short sleeves and lines on his face when he laughs. Lines there the whole time, trace out a hundred thousand movements over thirty-nine years. Those years have been good to him and he’s laughing loud enough to travel over the hum and chatter, the low glassy lights and Paul’s smiling too. Fred doesn’t drink anymore. He’s holding a garish orange mocktail provisionally like he’s not sure whether he’s going to make a joke out of it. Paul’s drinking his pint slowly and wondering why Fred suggested they meet in a bar. Drinking almost guiltily like maybe Fred’s got one up on him with this. Sober. Wholly present. The grace of it, real maturity to sit before a person and be exactly who you are. Not that he knows who Fred is anymore, not really. He’s never been able to bring himself to watch a single tv programme Fred’s been on. Seems like professional attention seeking all those game shows and celebrity jungle what-have-yous. He can’t quite square it with the Fred sitting opposite who seems as pathologically honest as he ever was, sort of aggressively friendly, although maybe that does make for good tv. Paul had forgotten the force of it, makes him want to sit back in his seat a little. 

He loses the thread halfway through what Fred’s saying. It drops off amid the noise of his smile, his gestures that seem to encompass a whole room and Paul just nods and it seems to be enough. Snagged on the out-of-time feeling of marking every change between them or thinking how they used to do this all the time; Fred taking up space, making it his and Paul watching and drinking and wanting something that he was never quite going to get. It makes him take stock of himself, of Fred, divorced now too although it seems kinder than his own. More like two people gently growing apart, drifting past each other, not like what he’d done at all. How he’d become too complacent with what he was, who he’d become. All the little decisions that make up a life, minute by minute, day by day until you’re faced in a direction you never thought you’d be and by then it just feels, not right but natural. Easy. Easy as smiling at a girl in a pub and Paul like a lot of men tries not to know exactly what he looks like but he knows the effects of it; all the caught smiles and pink cheeks and turning their bodies this way, an indication. Easy eventually to read it. To act on it. Not men, mind. Never that. Not after Fred. He gave her that much, surely that was some small blessing. But there’s only so much cheating a marriage can take, even if she never knew the extent of it. Even if it was left unspoken - something white and decaying below the steady surface of a pond - best not to look too closely. The last one was evidence enough for her. All the grubby track of it through their lives. Black fingerprint and a dog-eared receipt in the pocket of his trousers - _did you forget who does your fucking laundry -_ indicating he was in one place when he’d said another and anyway she already knew. 

It had been falling out of him for years, slowly moving towards a forced revelation. When it happened it didn’t all come at once; it slid out into the scuttling night in hot claustrophobic dreams, scattered out into the day in slips and fragments. _This is why you are the way you are_. These mid period revelations smuggled into his mind. He’s brimful of it, spilling everywhere but that doesn’t mean he can be it. It’s impossible to be that way and also do what he does. Even now sitting in front of Fred he doesn’t feel he’s fully accepted it. There’s the point of revelation and then there’s nothing else. He had come down to the bar stupidly unprepared for the shock of desire he fights down like nausea. Only gets worse as he drinks. The alcohol working its way through him like prying fingers off a window ledge, watching Fred’s hands tear a napkin, his mouth on the rim of his glass, close enough to touch. 

Fred’s moved on now, takes a big orange gulp of his drink, wetting his lips and looks at Paul seriously. _Here we go_ Paul thinks. 

‘We never talked about it,’ Fred starts cautiously, frowning, ‘y’know.’

‘What?’ 

‘Us, y’know, what happened. I -’

‘It’s not like if we’d talked about it it would’ve turned into something else,’ Paul says quickly.

‘No, but -’

‘It still would’ve been - y’know - we were young -’ He looks across the bar and back again, a little paranoid, although he knows there’s no way really that anyone can hear them or know what they’re talking about. Still that _we_ grips guilty in his mouth.

‘Right -’ Fred says, starting to look slightly frustrated.

‘Look, I’m sorry if that’s what you -,’ Paul drops his voice, ‘it’s that’s why you’re bring this up. I know I was a bit of a cunt like.’

But Fred’s shaking his head. ‘No it’s not like that - I just - like I said mate, we never talked about anything.’

Paul doesn’t reply. Lets the silence sit, filling the dim space around them until Fred’s shifting in his seat, looking uncomfortable. ‘I am sorry though,’ he says eventually, seriously.

Fred shakes his head and smiles at him easily. ‘Go on, let us buy you another drink.’ And Paul thinks that maybe he’s disappointed him, that he’s failed somehow. That Fred had wanted him here to shake something loose in him, to get an answer where Paul is certain he has none. 

 

 

**Twentieth Century, Go to Sleep**

In the beginning he’d had five, and five’s a shaky foundation. A handful of years, that; four trembling fingers and a thumb. Five years since the last time. It was only natural to worry what could happen when you were blackout the underside of the world or its dead centre where the sun dives below the horizon every day at six pm like it could drag his will with it, like he’d lose his will in the bottom of a beer bottle. Warm bodies in a stuffy hotel room and it’d only be a matter of time and dissolution. Once the lamplight broke and kaleidoscoped his vision, once the ground pitched and rolled and Fred was drunk on his bed. And there was such a lot of him to be drunk on Paul’s bed. Paul always wanted to compare the size of their hands and find himself wanting. Rough blunt fingers and he might’ve looked at Fred’s freshly shaved head, how it would prickle with gold to his drunk eye. Time moved in big circles, a slow backwards and forwards, viscous. Moved with connivance.

Fred would never take his top off. He was like a girl, wouldn’t let Paul touch his stomach but you don’t get to ask questions, that’s not how that works. You just let it take you. Later there’d be half-remembered tattered fragments of lamplight, heat and friction. And leaving straight after, even if he had to hold fast to the walls to do it. Fred leaving straight after, even if he had to kick him off the bed to make him. Never wanted to leave. That lad could’ve fallen asleep standing. Got to do it while time is still sticky, enough of a film on everything, your eyes are cloudy and then you sleep. 

 

+

 

If you were a ginger bairn you were probably going to get hit anyway, get a book to the back of the head and called gay so it was best to already have the fight curled in you. Clenched like a fist in his stomach and then if he were stupid enough, if, god forbid, he were stupid enough to act on any of those feelings splintered within himself - the crackling touches on the bitter green grass, the claggy mud and the things he shouldn’t have learnt from changing rooms - well he’d be ready. And part of that was that you hid it. Didn’t pay to be like those boiling kids with _fight me_ scratched on their faces. No. Be a good lad, smiling and laughing while the fight stayed tight packed inside him, trickling out sometimes like the sweat on his face as he ran faster to compensate for the shortness of his legs. Stood with his back against the door and his dad saying _feet flat on the ground head straight,_ pushing him to the floor with a ruler on top of his skull, flattening his hair. Fifteen and five foot six and still too short for a goalie.

The splintered things, the things he shouldn’t have learnt from changing rooms, things you could get hit for, did get hit for, spark out behind the youth club and the cider deadened the blow. Dull reverberation between his ears where his brain should’ve been and honest to god the taste of blood in his mouth was a surprise. Got up and stumbled away while the lad was shouting _the fuck did you do that for,_ voice rising desperately. You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want, felt right that there were consequences. You need some order or the semblance of order like a wall to run against, like a fist. How else would he have learnt?

The point is he’d leant in that first time fully aware of the consequences, fairly lousy with the consequences, prepared to taste blood because in some years he would be thirty and he would’ve stopped by then. Fred was a mess but he had a proper heart in his chest like a metaphor and despite his yawing insecurity he was exactly the type Paul wanted. What he wanted to want. A man, a big northern lad, loud and stereotypical quantities of beer and a gold chain and tattoos. Paul had a penitent’s desire for punishment but Fred would never do it. Had a heart as soft as pudding, that lad. 

He wouldn’t even give him shock, wouldn’t even give him that. Opened his mouth easy as you like, the sloppy heat of it. Wouldn’t give Paul a chance to right himself. _Paul Collingwood,_ he was supposed to say, _well I never would've guessed. It’s always the quiet ones._ That was what Paul was those days, a quiet one. All the chatterers said he was a bit part player, peripheral, holding onto his place by the skin of his teeth, his fingernails, any marginal part of him. And he’d thought _can he tell?_ Was it like something you can’t smell on yourself, how you’ll never know what your own home smells like? How he was marginal and cramped up with a rotten desire chewing his insides. But Fred smelt good, whatever it was, like his t-shirt rubbing against his skin released it when Paul crumpled it in his fist and Paul didn’t realise then that he’d rarely get it off him. Well why would he? He wasn’t thinking of a future time at all. It was all fight or fuck. It was all blood in his mouth or the raw taste of cotton, there was nothing else. Not when you were headed for marriage and kids the way Paul was. Got to get it all out before then. He wanted to ask Fred if he’d ever done it before but he couldn’t talk. No talking. It was obvious anyway that he hadn’t and Paul wouldn’t admit enough to show him. Clumsy fingers, trembling lips but god the charm of him, the size of him, the meat on his big bones and he when he laughed, he laughed right from his throat. 

 

+

 

The first few years Paul was in the squad it was all bad blood and churning allegiances. Not what he’d expected and he had half felt he wasn’t supposed to be there at all. He was just a skinny, scrappy lad from the North East with his ugly batting and his dibbly-dobbly bowling. Never went up through the age groups. What business did he have with Darren Gough and Nasser Hussain. With Alec Stewart and Mark Ramprakash. Not that long before tele-bound boyhood heros. Odd to see them now in the dressing room, could’ve caught any one of them out of the corner of his eye but he’d never let it show on his face.

When he looks at pictures from those days, the baggy whites or in training gears, cap backwards, at twenty-four, twenty-five - his sharp face, delicate mouth and body wound tight like a hare’s - he thinks how the years have relaxed him. Everyone grows into themselves. You learn to take the poverty out of the set of your jaw. Eventually money will make you comfortable if you let it. 

Fred was good to all the new lads, had some thick drunk mothering streak in him, would put his heavy arm around you and make sure you were alright. Sink pint after pint with you. Another excoriating defeat, burnt by the sun in a place no one back home had heard of. It started off small but it had settled into the bones of him by the time Fred was ripping his shirt off and tearing around the pitch like a footballer in Mumbai, 2002 and a rare glistening bright spot in the one dayers. Fred’s big broad chest and his soft belly, Paul’s hand was skidding across his back when they were all jumping on him and for a second he couldn’t quite pull apart the rushing victory and the desire shot through him, juddering and unruly. And it didn’t take long then for Paul to start it. A kamikaze run of a drunk lean in and if he was surprised that Fred didn’t lamp him, he was even more surprised when he knocked on his door again and again; loud, unsteady and uncertain. 

 

+

 

Early days Fred would smoke out on the balcony of Paul’s hotel room when the sky had that roughly handled look about it, ready to split. Blow the smoke straight up and Paul would feel some stock phrase come out his mouth like _it’s a filthy habit, that._ More to himself, more to register it, covert attempts at concern and Fred would just laugh at him and Paul would watch his fingers, his mouth and drink the way he always did, only beer and don’t show the effects of it. Just let the view slip and slide, going down like a sunset until he was drunk enough to will he was anything Fred was touching right then.

‘You don’t half look at us odd sometimes, Weed.’

And Paul was too drunk for shame but he did feel some wriggling drag of it through his chest and then it was gone and then he was back to Fred’s face and waiting. Waiting for when it would tip. For when all the colour had drained from the sky and Fred decided he was going to get all his vices in tonight. Paul’s face pressed to the crumpled bed sheets or chest to a blessedly cold wall. Baring himself for Fred - _c’mon c’mon -_ they both wanted the same thing he’d supposed, a little touch of the void. 

They were all the same way anyway, it was just differing expressions of it. What you did on the other side of the sharp line you drew between cricket and your life outside. All those gentle days in your life as a family man with your girlfriend or wife. Your kids. Something like the radio on in the kitchen, frying bacon and quiet laughter in the soppy midday light. Later he’d learn it was easier to leave when the kids were younger, before they quite got what it meant. Harder when they could toddle out the house after you shouting _daddy, daddy._ It might prick at him then but he had to grip the steering wheel, stare straight ahead and arrive at the other side. Give himself up to the institutional selfishness of professional sport. And maybe Paul was a little different, the way he chose to angle himself when he felt like he was about to be ruptured by it. The pressure swelling, insistent. He was a drinker but he wasn’t like Fred. Not enough that he could get any relief from it. So he’d be waiting. A few weeks into a tour his eyes would start to linger. Watching, waiting. Tracing the line of Fred’s body through his clothes. The open neck of his shirt. Heavy gold chain resting against warm pink blooms of sunburn. And then sometimes there were dreams, no details just a weight, a sense of pressing deep down inside himself and then giving in to something. He’d wake up hard with his heart rattling his chest. They’d be circling each other. Fred would be losing too, looking over at him. Paul would slowly pull his shirt off, sweat stuck and clinging. Fred, narrowed eyes or sucking on a fag. It wouldn’t be long then. 

 

 

**Jump the Hedges First**

He starts the 2017 season the way he’s started every season for the past five years with a sense of its ending and the end of his career. And this year it really seems like it might happen, back against a damp wall, sharing a cramped hotel room with Bunny, down at Merchant Taylors school in Hertfordshire for a pre-season game against Middlesex; miserable ebbing light and rain delays. So he’d looked up the September fixtures and got his parents to book a hotel room in Worcester for the last game of the season, so certain this time. He could forgive the scepticism in his dad’s voice though.

‘You sure?’

‘Look Dad, I’ll pay for the room, yeah?’

‘No, no it’s fine. Don’t worry about that. So this is really it, is it?’

‘Yeah, promise.’

It feels like it, watching Bunny in the staticy grey light, feels like the end is wrapped all around them, the end in their aging, the end in their failing bodies and the ridiculousness of a job where you can say that at thirty-four or forty. Both of them buffeting against the soon approaching end of their short careers. Bunny is snoring softly, mouth slightly open, crumpled on his side, one foot dangling out from under the covers and not for the first time, despite this unprepossessing appearance, Paul thinks about what it would be like to fuck him. It’s not a feeling necessarily connected to Bunny, could be anyone, any person, he’s testing the limits of something. If he were this person in this situation, if he could have this person, this man. If he could have him spread legs and mouth open on his neck and stubble scraping his lips. Testing the limits like finding the limits of Bunny’s tanned skinned from his winter abroad, following a line of black hair, both hands roughly pulling his underwear down and little hollows of his hip bones to lick into. And this, surely, is a sign of the end too. That he can no longer stop himself from thinking things like that, gets him half-hard - _big hands, long fingers, spread of them holding anything, space between fingers, thumb stroking across anything, no, his lips._ That all the very humanness you’re exposed to sharing a room with someone doesn’t seem to dull it at all. The dirty socks and laundry piles, snoring or bad habits and odd moods. That you might see someone pissing with the door to the bathroom open. That if you’d never shared a room with a certain person before, that first night you might not be able to sleep, stricken with how odd it was, this forced intimacy. Bunny making endless playlists of bad 90s house and techno even though he seemed to have spent most of his adolescence playing badminton so quite where he was hearing that music is honest to god a mystery. Ben hiding fag packets and on the phone to his kids, dropping into the softest registers of his voice. Or like with Scotty, his hair gel and troubling things like moisturiser, a neat line in the bathroom, advancing like mitosis. The overwhelming loudness of him, never quite still, whatever was crashing around in that lad’s head, jumped through his body like clattering down a hill. All this mess, it only makes him fonder or more wanting of something, just the tired frayed ends giving it a low lonely spark. It gets him confused now he’s loose and unmarried, that last year looking at Scotty whenever they’d shared a room and all the dangerous freedom of what could’ve happened if they were different people. 

Before they’d gone to sleep Paul had said quietly how he was going to retire at the end of this year and Bunny had skeptically raised his head off the pillow and said _Colly lad, I just don’t believe you._ And Paul had said _I am!_ Bunny shook his head, said fuck off affectionately and rolled over. So Paul had got his phone out and messaged Fred. He’d been looking for an excuse. Since their meeting in the hotel bar earlier in the year Fred had been lingering about the place like the cling of old smoke in clothes after a party. It kept seeming more and more like the thing to do, to get back there, to message him, phone him even and have it full bore - his rollicking voice bashing his ear. It’d seemed easy enough to stumble into a kind of friendship again, Fred, after all, was always the forgiving type. He can barely remember his own opinions about things, bouncing from one to another, much less hold onto a grudge. There’s a smidge of guilt in Paul in how they never really talk about Fred’s life that much. Not like Paul doesn’t ask but he’ll start on about flying out to America this and shooting schedules that and Paul will find himself making polite noises and picking at the seam of his jeans like there’s something almost embarrassing about it. Like being a cricketer is one thing, even a well-off one but being a celebrity, it makes him uncomfortable. Something hard and blatant about it, makes him steer the conversation back to cricket, back to the level ground of field placings and run rates and dressing room banter. Back to the place Paul will be leaving soon.

How’s things in Alderley Edge mate?

You want to go for a drink sometime? I’m retiring

Haha bout time mate ;) Go on then where?

And Paul had smiled, things falling into place, a plan forming. He’d see the season out for his lads, the ones who’d stayed, who’d kept the faith and it was only right he kept it too. This was to be his testimonial year after all. He’d already designed the logo for it, sketched out on a napkin during a solitary sunday dinner at his local. One final glorious testimonial year, one final statement on who he was. The supporters and their _betrayed, cheated but not defeated_ banner. He’d drag them up one handed if he had to, passed every fucking points reduction and financial penalty and then he’d retire. 

Even come the late spring when he’s hitting balls out of the ground, suddenly stronger than he’s ever been like he’s twenty one again and a taut animal energy in his muscles, he just shifts it slightly from a glorious scrap to going out in a hail of sixes. Down at Trent Bridge in early May, hauling the lads over the line in the chill, under the floodlights and every boundary a fuck you, like he can just whip through on a gale of bitter resentment. It’s not like it hasn’t brought them all together, even as it becomes clearer that this is more like a two year punishment, at least, that forty eight points is a hole, that the light is still a long way off. There he is though, in the gym, in the nets, all his lads working hard, the fierce pride in that and he can tell himself it’s good for the young lads. Get them used to some proper pressure, baptism of fire and all that, walk out scorched and ash-smeared but ready. And over drinks Bunny agrees, a bit of a drunk slump and nodding his head. Good character building stuff like a cracked back, like regular encounters with the black dog, got to learn to drag yourself out of that hole, like they did or like Bunny did. But Paul swears he’s had his moments too, swears into the curved glass bottom of his pint, listing and Bunny looks concerned. For example, after his divorce when the early morning would find him pinioned to his bed, when the sun could barely be bothered, it’s almost nine am and it looks like six thirty and it happens every year so it shouldn’t be a shock to him, but it was that year and he’d thought _there’s not a single part of my body I can move._ It’s alright though, he’s retiring in September. 

 

 

**Money on Money Is a Softer Landing**

Back then Paul would hear people say _oh y’know Duncan, he likes a lad who’ll get him a new pair of trainers. He likes a lad with a sponsorship deal - get him a new watch._ There was a game there, there was something trailing under everything that was said. He liked some people and he didn’t like others. Didn’t like Fred. Didn’t like Harmy. The both of them sat laughing in a corner of the changing room. More like giggling. Harmy was bent over his knees and whispering _oh fuck, oh my god._ And Fred was looking on at his work, satisfied as God on the seventh day.

‘We’ll just wait for the fucking chuckle brothers to finish over here shall we?’

Back then there was always a chance to incriminate yourself, the kind of fractious team meetings they’d have where Duncan would throw any lad a rope to hang himself. Paul was a champion rope dodger though. Sat a little closer to Straussy, caught only the trailing lines of meaning.

 

+

 

‘Not like you to be clumsy, Weed’ Fred said and there was a shift then. 

When he broke his nose. 2004 and he had run into a metal pole playing basketball on tour in Grenada. And that night something had slipped as Fred carefully held his jaw, turned his face to the light and away again. Drunk tenderness, that awareness you’re not sitting right in your skin, every gesture outsized to compensate. 

‘Gonna ruin your pretty face, you are.’

He was joking but still the heat had come to Paul’s cheeks, a dance of needles just below his skin. 

‘No chance of that for you’ Paul said gruffly, frowning. 

‘It were dead funny though, sorry mate’ Fred said, starting to laugh, ‘What are you like?’

He was pulling Paul closer, Paul’s face was on Fred’s chest jarring his nose, a bright beam of pain bleaching out Fred’s words for a second and then _what are you like?_ Repeated but then accompanied by his heartbeat, blood pumping, the rise and fall of his chest and Paul was too sober. Even if Fred wasn’t. Even if Fred was trying to kiss him then. Nudging his face up and they didn’t kiss much. Fred was still mumbling _what are you like?_ Then kissing him so gently Paul had felt the spread of it through his body, flooding him, curling through the empty space and every pink folded part of his insides. He should’ve stopped him. Paul wasn’t a fucking woman that he could be kissed like that. Fred couldn’t show him what he was like that. Unloosening him, pulling him apart between waves of it and he didn’t understand why a broken nose got him this; his shorts off, t-shirt off, catching his nose and mumbled sorrys. A warm mouth on his chest, getting lower and his hand had stuttered just above Fred’s head, not sure whether he should touch. 

And then the next morning the sun was making it’s guilty way up, nudged him awake until he was laid in a pool of it, stretching out and finding the edges with his fingertips. His clothes were a path to the bed and someone had the tv on in the room next to him, just shaking through the walls, jostling him to get up. One of Fred’s socks was lying wrinkled, lonely abandoned on the floor and the longer he stared at it the more he started to believe it was deliberate. Taunting him as the sun flicked his eyes. _Look at what you’ve done now._

He broke his nose and soon Fred was falling asleep on his bed. Soon he was waking up to Fred’s body, the pull of it, depression in his matress, under the covers somehow and the tarry early morning smell of his breath warming his neck. And sometimes he’d turn around in his arms and kiss him before his eyes opened, dragging the night back over them like a blanket, his back to the door like he could fight it off. It was still early. It was still dark. It was still okay to be this close. After you break apart sometimes the pressure is still there aching in your chest. Sometimes the release is not enough. You need more. Worse things, greedy things, things you shouldn’t ask men for. Affection and soothing. Warm skin under the covers. 

He absolutely did not love him, that was a trick of the dark. A lack of light, a lack of words can bind you until it feels like love. 

But after it could feel like love too. When they had unwound from each other but they were still touching. If they kissed after and if Fred made them coffee and Paul sat up in bed, mussed hair, bare-chested and watching. All the quiet morning movements and the sun ticking higher, the ring of the spoon against the mug. The tiny hotel kettle sputtering to life and Fred’s big fingers ripping apart packets of sugar felt a lot like love. 

 

+

 

Back then Paul was uncertain and not used to money. He left it to settle in his bank account like scattering seeds and hoping something will grow. It’s not the same for posh lads is it? Money on money’s a very different thing. Money on money’s a softer landing. Paul didn’t want to rate himself, get above himself and drive up to his parents house in a shiny sports car like the slick of new money on all the neighbour’s eyes. Every hard zero could be a dividing line. Splitting and multiplying. Money fills gaps and creates new ones. His mates at the pub were already joking saying _oh Colly’ll get this one._ All that money, time and distance. Like how the slow attrition of time and distance will rub the edges off his accent. Like how his kids will barely have one. 

 

+

 

The night after they win The Ashes Fred had come banging on Paul’s door and Paul clearly forgot to lock it because there he was in Paul’s room, four am and Paul had woke groggy on his back, legs scissored in the light slice coming through the door. Undignified in his boxers and t-shirt hitched up above his navel and Fred had been standing over him and saying _well I’ve gone and chucked his trainers out the window so we’ve probably got half an hour - he's not on the ball at the best of times, that one._ Paul had sat up, confused. 

‘The fuck are you talking about?’

‘Harmy! C’mon mate, there’s not a lot of time here!’ he said grinning down at Paul, then he dropped awkwardly to his knees by the bed, sitting back on his heels. ‘I’ve brought you a drink and all -’ he added, solemnly holding up a slightly bashed in open can of something and Paul groaned, swung his legs over the side of the bed, over Fred’s shoulders.

‘Oh you’re dead romantic, you are -’ Paul muttered, taking the can and tipping it back, warm lager bubbling down his throat and Fred was reaching up, shrugging off Paul’s leg, reaching up and placing his hand at the base of Paul’s neck, a slight pressure against Paul’s throat when he swallowed. Paul shut his eyes, woozy and something starting up inside him, downed the rest of it in shuddery gulps. When he’d finished he crumpled the can and let it fall on his bed. Fred’s hand had dropped to his chest, fisting his t-shirt, tugging it and Paul’s eyes drifted to the bright corridor visible through the open door.

‘Go and shut the fucking door, you stupid bastard -’ Paul muttered, stroking his hand over Fred’s head, the soft suedey feel of his buzz-cut tickled the palm of his hand, made him shiver. He was moving his hand firmer now, pressing Fred’s cheek to his thigh, Fred groaned, shutting his eyes and Paul dug his heel into Fred’s back. Fred kissed his thigh, nose pushing up the leg of his boxers and Paul’s fingers were closing against Fred’s scalp, wanting hair to tug on to. Got hard with one eye on the corridor - _look at you, look at you -_ the way he’d appear to anyone who walked past, all open and wanting, unshaven, unslept, red-ringed eyes and obviously encouraging _guilty_ with his hand on Fred’s head. _There’s not a single one of yous that knows_. The actual sound of footsteps, voices then shook him out of it, heart-spasming, sent him stumbling over Fred, down on his knees, carpet burn and then shutting the door. Slumped to the floor with his back against it, hearing the voices go past, dizzy with the alcohol sticky in his bloodless veins, the receding adrenaline and Fred was crawling across the floor to him, on his hands and knees and laughing a bit wild eyed. 

‘Oh fuck - oh fuck -’ 

Fred collapsed next to him, all heavy boned, limbs moving fitfully against the carpet like he was looking for purchase. Paul's heart was finally slowing, but still it made his head swim when he looked down at Fred. Now Fred was getting up on his elbows and mountains had moved faster, entire continents reshaped in the time it took him to get semi-upright. 

'Anyway mate - as I was saying - chucked his trainers out the window, didn't I so there's not - he could come back yeah?’ he said, looking up at Paul.

‘Well I hope he _is_ gonna come back like - wouldn’t do if he’s got himself lost’ Paul said, gingerly stretching out on the floor next to Fred, knees starting to sting with where he’d scraped the skin off on the carpet. He nudged Fred with his foot.

‘Dunno why you’re here mate, you’re that drunk, you’ll never get it up.’

‘The fuck I won’t’ said Fred, laughing but he slowly lowered himself back to the floor again, closed his eyes and mumbled ‘I do quite fancy you, y’know?’ 

Fred couldn’t see the way that made Paul smile, something warm gathering in him, rolled onto his front and turned Fred’s face towards him, gentle fingers on his jaw and kissing him like an answer. 

 

 

**So Much Wanting To Be Seen**

‘My problem, yeah - my problem is I never worry about the right things,’ Fred’s saying when they meet again a few months later. Under a sodden grey sky in June, his gestures smaller, constrained by his own home or more comfortable in it. Paul is sitting on Fred’s sofa, not quite able to relax. Not yet, even among the clutter, shoved a gym bag off the sofa to sit down. Fred had recently moved to Manchester, after his divorce and the flat still has an odd liminal feel to it, like someone making the best of having to camp out in a show-flat, at once homely and impersonal. Sharp granite corners and heavy fabrics rucked up by piles of kit and papers, plastic bottles half-filled with protein shakes. There on the overstuffed sofa, Fred’s in full on explaining mode, teasing a story out right from the start.

‘Me and you like - I never even - dunno what it was, mate. I worried about being the captain because I was proper shit at that -’

‘You weren’t shit.’

‘I was! Proper shit. Anyway, you and me, I dunno. It was like me drinking, just seemed as long as I kept going I -’

‘It’s all I worried about -’ Paul interrupts. Fred has one arm across the back of the sofa, gentler somehow, like he’s shrunk down and Paul’s starting to think that it was always that way; Fred’s aggressive good-time deep in his drinks surface and then the blind tender parts skinned underneath. Fred turns his body towards him, shifting until his knee is pressed to Paul’s thigh.

‘Yeah?’ Fred says quietly.

Paul raises his eyebrow, a half smile.

From the hotel bar to the phone calls and messages, to the sofa and Fred’s flat they’ve been telling the story of what happened, a little more each time. How Fred was blundering and Paul was terrified, although he’d never use that word. How it was different for Paul because Fred wasn’t the first, was he? Fears that it had become a pattern, something impossible to ignore. Not like those fears have wholly dissipated, not sitting close to Fred, Fred wearing shorts, bare muscular thighs. Paul’s been on a permanent reckoning, hitting it over and over but he’s still stuck on that rough divot - the meaning - what he’s supposed to do with it. Not a husband anymore and only a dad half the time. At one point they were both men with a very definite idea of who they were but then Fred’s saying, in that accidently aphoristic way he has, how no one really knows how to be anything, but Paul thought he did. He says he thought he knew how to be the captain, to lead a victorious charge out of the darkness and that.

‘You can’t save the club by yourself mate, there’s all this shit that has nothing to do with you - y’know the money and that. You really think you could do it all yourself?’

Paul laughs. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he says, ‘or I wanted to think that. It’s just easier -’ 

‘Easier?’

‘Yeah I think so. If there’s no one to blame but yourself.’

 

Out on the field in the fleeting summer sun and a wind that slants across his face like a personal attack, mostly he’s missing Scotty. Scotty who he’d not talked to since he’d left because it was easier that way. No messaging him to ask him how he was, how the missus was, not like with Rocky. Well Scotty, maybe he’d relied on him too much after the divorce and maybe that was sad given his age and Scotty’s. The fact that people would joke Scotty, fair and slight, looked like his son, and the complex guilt and vestige of disgust that left in him. Like it was a deliberate thing people saying that, taunting him somehow. The ugly feeling he got sometimes at Scotty’s stammering performance down South. _Serves him right._ It didn’t pay to think too much about it. 

They’d creaked through a winless June, dragging feet and Paul doing his part-time dad bit. Picking up meals for one from the local and watching his robot lawn-mower puttering around his garden. Seems odd that summer that everything can be slipping and faltering while he’s playing the best he has for years, giving bravura performances on shaky ground. Him and Bunny and Rushy the last men standing in a team of green young youths. Bunny’s hair getting greyer and if Rushy had any left to lose, he certainly would’ve lost it. There are little washes of hope throughout, like Paul becoming the oldest t20 Blast centurion - a mixed blessing that, didn’t need reminding of his age - or Bunny, Durham’s all time top wicket taker but they trickle away again and mostly it’s a kind of resigned struggle, limping towards the end of the season.

On a grey school sports day type of afternoon in August he has his testimonial Tyne-Wear derby t20 match, all the people assembled there like the kind of story he want to tell about himself. Bunny mooning around after King Kev. Harmy’s there, looking a bit stuffed into his Newcastle kit and he’s never quite lost that weary look he developed at some point, whenever Paul talks to him. And Paul would apologise but apologising would mean dragging it all out and neither of them want that, do they? It’s enough that he’s here and Paul claps him on one slightly inaccessible shoulder and says _alright, mate?_ Then here comes Scotty looking like a regular discount Seb Larsson, which Paul promptly informs him of, all that early summer bitterness dying on his tongue as sharply as it appeared. Scotty grinning at him and the word he always thinks of is _boyish_ but he’s had an idea lately that might just be the old self-punishment. And Scotty tells him not to talk to him about Seb Larsson, fucked off down to Hull hadn’t he? Scotty as bright and shiny as his clean nylon footie kit, neat folded sock tops, near vibrating with enthusiasm, brought half his family with him and Paul finds he's not quite as good at holding a grudge as he thought.

 

In September Bunny leaves in a cataclysm with Keats and Paul Coughlin, and Paul hosts a party at his house. The weather doesn’t turn up and the night is heady with clouds, the wind all coming autumn. The season is over and the summer gone with it. Bunny stays after to help him clean up and they slump on his oversized sofa having a last drink that tips Paul right over into maudlin. Thinking about this season and the season before. And maudlin drunk is the worst kind, keeps staggering over words, tongue pinging and repeating himself, saying to Bunny, leaning into Bunny and saying how the thing about being a cricketer or any kind of sportsman is how most of it is failure.

‘You fail a lot of the time, y’know? No one thinks about that - how it’s mostly failure -’ 

And Bunny’s laughing, says ‘Now I know I’ve gotta leave lad, you’re starting to sound like us.’ 

‘Well, aye, you’re right, you are - about a lot of things - the failure part -’ 

‘Thanks,’ Bunny’s still laughing, puts his arm around Paul, shaking his head. ‘The failure part.’

For all that he’s a skinny lad there’s something comforting about Bunny. _You know about the failure part_ Paul thinks, lets his head rest on Bunny’s shoulder, on his crumpled shirt. The warmth of his body through his clothes. In his line of sight the collar of his shirt, open necked, two, three buttons, hair on his chest, faint triangle of sunburn lingering from a few weeks back when it was still summer. It doesn’t ever leave him, as much as he might think he’s got it all out, wrung it right out of himself. Pathetic really how unsteady it makes him feel, how he’s lifting his head now, nose grazing Bunny’s beard, his cheek.

'What's all this about, eh? You daft old bastard,’ Bunny says quietly, turning his head slightly. His handsome lined face, all the grey peppering his beard, his hair, the way it’s blurred all of his edges, chased away the last remaining gawkiness. Bunny’s shaking his head, smiling fondly at Paul, too close. Close enough that Paul can see his eyes are blue, even in the dim light, almost says _your eyes are blue,_ like that might be a shock to him too. His arm around Paul’s shoulder and Paul doesn’t know if he realises his thumb is stroking back and forth, rubbing Paul’s shirt against his skin. It’s not about Bunny, not really. It can’t be. It’s more that he wants a lot, more that the wanting has become so much of him it sometimes feels like that’s all there is. And it clings to people. Just want and then the sneaking thought that he can’t do another year of this. Anyone who’d asked, he’d been saying how he’ll keep going until there’s nothing left, until all the fight has gone but what if that’s now? He feels empty enough, hollow and grasping. Empty enough that the careful drunk way Bunny’s touching him is staving his chest in. He wants to tell Bunny how he remembers when Bunny was just a kid with a daft haircut, how there’s no one left who remembers when Paul was just a kid with a daft haircut.

And then he leans forward, breath catching and kisses him.

Just enough to press his lips against Bunny’s. Enough time that he feels how Bunny’s mouth is slightly open, in shock most likely. Enough time to set an ache in Paul’s stomach before Bunny gently pushes him away. His eyes open and Bunny's frowning at him, looking worried and Paul thinks _the fuck have I done?_ Bunny seems to shake himself, nervous laughter tripping out his mouth saying ‘Fucking hell Paul, didn’t know you were gonna miss us that much.’

‘Sorry - Jesus - sorry lad -’ 

‘This what I get for me 14 years service? A snog from the captain?’ Bunny’s smiling, he’s trying, Paul appreciates that, giving him an out. Like it’s a joke, it’s just a joke. And Paul sits back, covers his face with his hands.

‘I’m so sorry - I’m that drunk -’ he mutters. Two am is suspended time. A living room in the dead of night seems to lose its purpose, you can forget yourself.

‘Ah it’s alright, no harm done, eh? I’m flattered like - uh married y’know but flattered -’ he laughs and Paul just feels sick. ‘I think most lads though, they’d probably prefer you got ‘em a beer.’ Bunny pats his back and then Paul feels him stand up. Can’t quite bring himself to uncover his eyes. He can hear Bunny moving around the room, clink of collected bottles, crumpling cans in his hands. Not moving, concentrating on the rough fabric of the sofa cushion under his palms, while the nausea swims inside him, lapping up his throat.

Bunny’s back again, standing in front of him saying quietly ‘You alright?’ and Paul nods. Opens his eyes, forces himself to stand, a bit close and unsteady. Bunny takes a step back. 

When Bunny leaves he stands in Paul’s doorway, cold air from outside washing over Paul’s feet, puts his arms around Paul, smiling and says ‘Just a hug.’

‘Ha.’

Bunny winces, pulling Paul a bit closer, ‘Sorry,’ he mutters. ‘It’s alright, you know - you’re gonna be alright, mate.’

‘Yeah - I know.’

Bunny pulls back a bit, forehead creased and uncertain mouth. ‘Don’t do anything stupid like retire, the lads need you.’

‘You know I’m never gonna retire.’ 

‘Aye, I know, they’ll bury you under the wicket like.’ 

‘That’s it,’ Paul says, ‘that’s it.’ 

A few nights later, he’s on the phone to Fred, starts telling him about the party, it’s all ramping up inside him, a good story until he gets to ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve done, I was that drunk -’ 

And Fred’s laughing, ‘What? What’ve you done now?’, like Paul’s a person who habitually does amusing things when he’s drunk, it’s just a part of Fred’s generosity that he’ll always let you be a bigger, funnier part of the story. 

‘Oh I’ve just -’ he starts, searching for a way to say it but when he thinks about that night, the loneliness making slack the boundaries of himself, pouring into the bedsheets, the mattress. How it’d been four am and he’d thought of Bunny’s face - the worry worse than anger because it suggested pity, that was where the shame was coming from. There was something pitiable about what he’d done. Fred’s waiting on the line, he can hear his breath, waiting for Paul to make him laugh. And he can’t make a joke of it. There’s a chasm opening, right now, splitting rock.

‘Ah y’know what? Doesn’t matter, mate - sorry -’

Outside, the autumn is rising like damp through the mud. 

 

 

**Sad Lads Club of Working Class Heroes**

It’s not like if you went to a concrete eyesore comprehensive in the North East anyone taught you where Pakistan was and Harmy would say how when he was in the under nineteens he just got on a plane and went. Disorientating, that, to step out into the hot dark night with no clue where home was in relation to yourself. And he’d say how he got so out of sorts and homesick that he went to Fred’s room every night. And later Fred would tell Paul how Harmy cried that first night, three am and great wracking sobs, silent shaking his skinny shoulders, holding a newspaper his mam had sent him from home. Paul had frowned and sucked on his teeth and wondered why either of them thought this was something he wanted to know. Back then Paul didn’t want his head shoving near any of that. Thing is any one of them might just be holding on but it’s not right to show yourself. Everyone’s got a sunless heart and creeping secrets. Like knowing every mole and freckle on Fred’s collarbone, like knowing the press of Fred’s lips just behind his ear. Like 1991 and a fist to his jaw, the ferrous taste of blood in his mouth. What kind of man just lets everyone come poke at the naked heart of him like that?

 

It was November in Pakistan and Paul was finally starting to settle, racking up the runs and at some point Fred had stumbled into his room and thumped to a stop right near Paul’s bed and said, ‘Well, I’m married now.’ Like he was continuing a conversation they’d already started. Blearily looking at Paul like he was trying to find him, really searching him out through the drunk fug.

‘I know,’ Paul said, ‘I know you are.’

‘Right. Well I am.’

‘We’re all of us fucking married, Fred,’ Paul said tiredly.

It didn’t feel like an ending, even as Fred left, the door banging and Paul’s knuckles turning white, gripping the edge of his bed. Bile rose in his throat but he swallowed it down and waited.

A day, a week, a few months. A few months and they were in India. Fred taking the captaincy hard, shut down like a seaside town in winter - same sense of huddling isolation. Not even talking to Harmy now and drinking with no small measure of desperation, chasing it down like he was afraid stopping would let the light in. And Paul was waiting, easier now because they weren’t really friends, because they were getting to the worn out end of it all. It wouldn't be long now until they weren’t talking. Wouldn’t be long until the fight where Fred said _I don't actually think you’re a very nice person._ And Paul will laugh until he’s choking on it, the fucking cheek, the primness of it _, oh aye? Fuck off then. Go on, fuck off._

There are different ways of surviving and Paul’s was he learnt how to read those trailing lines of meaning, learnt how to place himself where he needed to be. If you weren’t born at the centre you have to find your own way there. Drag yourself hand over hand and fuck Fred for not understanding that. For making snide comments about him sucking up to the lads Duncan liked, about him playing the game. Fuck Fred for judging him for wanting something better for himself. For not wanting to be in the sad lads club of working class heroes like Fred and Harmy. Back then it was battering his chest like a second heartbeat.

And one night Paul was watching Fred smoke and saying _you don’t know what it’s like for us. I’m not far enough away from it yet. I’m not comfortable._ And Fred had blown smoke out the corner of his mouth, away from Paul, looking tired and said _what if you never are, mate?_

 

When they’re not talking he read interviews and articles, scanning for hypocrisy. Fred’s not a steady state and he did the right thing. He’s got a good heart but he’ll pull you under. The weight of him not knowing himself. Like how he doesn’t support a football team. What it means for a man to be that uncertain and then later to support Man City. They’re not talking by then but the wrongness of it confirms something to Paul about Fred’s character. Any post 2008 neophyte conversion to Man City is suspect. Fine if you were down at Main Road from the beginning but who can trust a man who’s drawn by oil money poured to glass cathedrals. Like Tom Finney and the original Invincibles just aren’t good enough for him, even though he sometimes claims them. 

It’s better this way.

 

Paul was still waiting. Marking time by the cities they played in - Nagpur, Mohali, Mumbai, Delhi, Faridabad, Kochi. No Fred. Guwahati where the sky let loose all that rain. Proper torrents of it pounded the saturated green grass. No play and Paul waited in his hotel room watching the heavy clouds sag the horizon. Surely now he was coming. 

Back home Paul had cracked and they’d met in Manchester. In a hotel after Paul had spent a month or so calling. Fred never answered his phone and Paul was surprised at how angry he was. Turning up at the hotel like he was ready to batter down the door and he was washed through on a wave of it. Bare tempest of hurt and want and confusion. Fred’s dumb tight-jawed reaction. And after the fight they were looking at each other like it was all just draining away. They were empty and they didn’t know each other anymore really. Fred sat on the bed, head in his big hands and Paul remembered all the mundane movements of his fingers that for a drop of time felt like love. He could no longer imagine it then, not with his dirty fingernails.

It was late spring and the sun was straining higher in the sky, almost seven and it was just starting to falter. Paul walked back towards the station. Knots of people in Piccadilly Gardens. After work drinks and smoking outside pubs. It was Friday night, women walking, tugging down skirts, holding bottles.That sense of weekend possibilities appeared as the sun finally started to sink and the streetlights flickered on. He didn’t think about Fred but he did think how an emotional man is a dangerous thing. A man who doesn’t know himself. In a few weeks Paul would be thirty. In half an hour he would be on the Transpennine Express back to Newcastle. He found he could comfort himself with that, felt right, felt like a proper ending. Back to himself, back to where he belonged as the North York Moors crumble to County Durham and on toward Newcastle. 

At the big glass doors to the station he stopped and let a woman pass in front of him, she turned and smiled and Paul thought how you can’t just do whatever you want. He didn’t think about Fred. In his pocket his phone started buzzing, he took it out, looked at the number and then turned his phone off and walked towards the ticket office. 

 

 

**I Will Never Get So Old Again**

In November he’s out to Australia with the England lads for The Ashes, going from slipping on leaves under a steely sky to red shoulders in the skin-peeling sun and they’re all feeling crisp and bright and ready despite Ben’s street fighting man exploits making everyone enter interviews dukes up. Paul’s getting up every morning like a man with a plan, dragging kit bags and equipment out to the nets, goalie in the footie warm ups even though some say he’s still a bit on the short side. But hadn't Jorge Campos been 5’6” or something and Paul’s got the odd few inches on him. Anyways he’s chock full of the simple contentment of being a useful cog in a big turning machine. A good arm for throw downs and as fit and fast as he ever was. Finds himself substitute fielding in a tour match against the Cricket Australia Eleven in Adelaide, in Mason Crane’s whites and every ball seemingly coming his way, loopy delight through his whole body but he tries not to show it much. Fred messaging him as the series starts, teasing.

You left all ur jumpers at home mate????

No ones making you watch, lad

Not good for a ginge surely??? All that sun??

Stop wanking and get back to work  
“Work”

So he’s a man with a plan and a purpose and it’s enough to carry him through those early weeks until the weight of defeat after defeat, the eventual loss of The Ashes presses on him enough to break him wide open. To see him one night sitting on his bed, curtains open, watching the lights in the city cycle through their perpetual motion as people move from room to room, floor to floor and buildings shut and open. He’s in Melbourne for the fourth test, the night after Cooky gets his double hundred and he should be asleep but he’s feeling raw and exposed. Searching through every decision, every action looking for fault and blame and then all of a sudden as he’s watching a cleaner in an office building drag her hoover across the floor something drops in him. At that moment he can’t pretend anymore that he doesn’t remember the name of that lad behind the youth club in 1991 or what he looked like when the late summer sun was just simmering above the horizon, about to die, golden hour in Consett and Jamie with his shaved head and mouth wet with cider, double knots in the shoelaces of his trainers. It’s not going to go away. Not the grass, not the gap between his front teeth, not his remembering how something had been brewing up all summer, glimpsed on the football field or sitting too close on the bus or bikes in a ditch or propped up outside the newsagents and Jamie’s hand pressing a half-inched chocolate bar into his palm. And hadn’t Jamie leant towards him? And Paul was fifteen and he no longer believed that taking shit from everyone was just the dues for being slightly undersized and ginger, but he had believed Jamie was going to kiss him. He’d never been so drunk in his life but this single idea was sharp as a shard of glass. Because Jamie had leant towards him, his hot sweaty hand on Paul’s in the grass between them and yeah he’d looked scared but they were fifteen, everyone’s scared when they’re fifteen. That kind of thing, it’s no one’s fault really. It’s all just a matter of time and geography. He can forgive it, the ringing in his ears and the scrambling up and away, eyes stinging cycling back home up the wrong side of the street until he’d realised. It’s not going to go away, he sees it now. It wasn’t his fault. Bike clattering in the yard and door slamming, tripping on the stairs up to his room and his mam shouting after him. Tending to the bruise on his jaw for weeks afterwards, an all too literal mark of shame he had several stories for depending on the audience. 

All the men, all their names congregate in his throat ready to come out like a list of casualties or survivors. The ones after Jamie, more successful but still they’d caused him no small amount of guilt and every time he’d said to himself how he was done now. Like Bunny - who shouldn’t be on the list - Bunny who every time he thinks about he tries it out in his head to see if it’s become a funny story yet, _I got so lonely I kissed Bunny._ Not yet. Scotty - who’s not on the list - although Paul would’ve wanted him there and doesn’t he know that now as much as he’s ever known anything. Knows it with a nauseous certainty, the only way to make sense of pin prick memories of startling specificity and the disproportionate hurt his leaving caused. And Fred, who he’s thinking of now. The younger version with his loose grin and alcoholic brashness, gold chain slipped to the side, at rest on the pillow beside him. The flicked paint brush tip marks of his freckles and moles and his fat pink bottom lip. And Paul’s thinking how he’d said to him once how there was a point where he felt like everything had changed and he didn’t know why that was and Fred had gone quiet and said eventually that he knew what Paul meant. Paul had felt the giddy pull of intimacy, tugging on him to open up, to say _there was a time where I thought we fell in love and I don’t know why,_ but he’d stepped back from it.

Paul’s laid on his back now, bunched hotel sheets and he’s got to be up in five hours but Fred, any version of him he’d have now; younger, older. To be pressed into the bed by his weight, to have his hands re-learn the contours of Fred’s body. To have Fred see him and to be shored up by that. Everything about him is generous and unbounded and a person could get caught up in that. Paul is. Remembering unbuttoning shirts, licked skin and carpet burned knees. Laughing in the latter part and Fred was sometimes sober. Sober and looking right at him and if Fred could see him now, if Fred could watch him getting desperate and undone; bringing himself off thinking only about him, his mouth, his hands. Because Fred had always known, this kind of thing, it’s no one's fault, it’s not something he has to find the cause of, it just is. Fred could kiss him and really make him believe that. 

The next morning he gives a bleary eyed, under-caffeinated interview about Cooky’s double century and ends up talking about failure, that night coming back on a loop. How Cooky’s 244 not out was a rare aberant spark in the general gloom of failure. He’s getting soft in his old age, he was soft and stuck as the Ashes fell away around them, not one single thing he could do about it and a very particular English sense of determined resignation, aiming for dignified failure. Maybe that’s all he has now, he couldn’t save Durham and he can’t save England. There’s a limit, beyond his outstretched fingertips, things outside his control. 

 

One night, in Sydney, he’s skyping Fred and thinking how fifteen years ago, when it all started, this wouldn’t have been possible; Fred’s face on his laptop screen, his laughter bouncing out Paul’s headphones, rolling in with barely a delay from thousands of miles away. How quick you get used to the everyday miracles of every banal technological epoch. One eye always on the little image of himself in the corner, only time you ever get to see what you actually look like talking to other people. Fred’s laid on his bed, propped up on one arm, two pm in Manchester. It’s Sunday in Sydney and Paul tells Fred how from the future he can safely say that the rest of Fred’s day is going to go well. _Saturday, apart from the cricket, it’s a good day, no major disasters._ And Fred’s laughing telling him he’s not quite sure that’s how it works. _I can assure you mate, as someone who’s in Sunday, it's definitely how it works._ At one point the screen freezes and suspends Fred in a caught moment. He’s got a dopey bemused half-smile on his face, the kind that from his position gives him a bit of a double chin and Paul thinks how if he were a different man, a more sentimental man, he’d take a screenshot and save it. No, if he were the type of man who knew how to take a screenshot on his laptop, he’d take a screenshot and save it. This one little plucked moment beamed to him from yesterday. 

 

When it appears, it appears in spring. Appears among the high vaulted ceilings and chrome and echoing corners of his house. Appears in the pre-season with the grass and budding leaves. His phone on the kitchen counter or beside his bed, slow flashing a soft bluish light and he’s laughing more often than not. They almost kiss in Manchester but Paul pulls back when it's just about to tip, says quietly _I don’t want to make the same mistakes again_ and Fred’s frowning but nodding and Paul’s never known himself to act like this; cautious, sensible. So really it appears in Manchester too, in Fred’s flat, among the clutter. At the station when he’s leaving, in a message Fred sends him received on a crowded platform. 

In the mornings he stands in his kitchen and looks out the way across the fields, shedding their winter pall, shaking off the season. Bare feet on the tiled floor even though it’s not warm enough and he tells himself he’s doing the right thing. It’s either sensible or it’s that scared kid cycling away from the youth club down the wrong side of the road. He should be old enough to know the difference. Age gets you more room to breathe, once you’ve lived enough to see things change, to see yourself change. A better sense of the scale and movement of things but maybe you still have to work for that last bit. 

In April when the rain is battering new leaves, Fred comes to his house. Stands in his living room, hands on his hips, wearing his glasses and says, ‘Fuck me mate, this must cost a fortune to heat.’

‘Yeah - it does that.’ Paul says, laughing and looking at Fred, shaking his head.

‘What? What?’ Fred’s saying, laughing too. 

So Paul gives him the tour, the important bits mind; his living room with it’s wall-mounted massive tv and floor to ceiling windows, bean-bags for the kids and a wood-burning stove. The brick conservatory, folding French windows out onto the big lawn that tumbles to open fields. Sometimes there are cows out in the next field over, slowly ruminating their way across the grass. Back in his conservatory, the grill and all it’s various settings, the discernments of colour that can be achieved from fire and wet pink-red steak. And then he cooks for them. Not like he’s much of a cook but he can do meat and two veg, as long as one of those veg is a potato. Fred’s standing too close or he’s clattering round in the background, getting plates and glasses, knives and forks. Looking over Paul’s shoulder at the frying pan and Paul lets his body relax, pressing against the solid warmth of Fred’s chest. Fred’s chin resting on the top of his head, his hand coming to hold Paul’s wrist as he moves the spatula, frying the potatoes. 

‘Stop it - you’re not helping.’ Paul says laughing. ‘Why don’t you fuck off and make yourself useful?’ 

After tea they sit outside and Paul whacks the patio heaters up to fight off the damp early spring chill. All the stars struggling to shine through the clouds above them. Fred smokes a single cigarette and Paul finds he doesn’t care as much as he used to, lying back on his patio chair, watching the smoke gently sift through the air.

‘You know the earth’s not really round, right?’ Fred says quietly and Paul laughs.

‘Y’what, mate?’

‘You ever think about how most pictures, yeah, of the earth, the horizon is completely flat and it’s only Nasa ones where it’s curved -’

‘- no I don’t -’

‘ - well some people, yeah, they say those could be doctored -’

‘Who says that?’

‘No, right, I’ve been listening to this podcast yeah that’s about - it’s called The Flat Earthers. Okay, right why does the water stay still if we’re hurtling through space? Wouldn’t it wobble? And if you’re in a helicopter and you’re hovering you’d see the earth move under you if it were rotating -’ 

Fred is half in shadow, running a gentle line down his face, just the light from the windows of Paul’s conservatory, tip of Fred’s cigarette glowing orange and his posh glasses reflecting it when he brings it to his mouth, still talking, _and that’s why all the countries, yeah, they have bases on Antarctica_. Fred takes a drag. Right now the smoke is curling through his lungs, tickling branches, wet ash in dark bunched places. There’s a whole world inside every person you’ll never know anything about. Paul downs the rest of his beer. _Or maybe it might be turnip shaped?_

‘Turnip-shaped?’ Paul says, laughing with a dizzy fondness, head back on his seat, looking up at the night sky. 

When they go back inside, Fred falls asleep on the sofa while Paul’s tidying up, scraping plates, loading the dishwasher and he turns and Fred’s on his back, feet up on the arm rest, arms folded across his chest. Paul drags a wool blanket off an armchair and puts it over Fred, heart in mouth like he might wake and see Paul doing something that daft. Like that might reveal something Fred didn’t already know. But he just rolls over, pulling the blanket with him and Paul goes to bed. Lying in the dark and a floor below him Fred sleeps. It’s almost tangible, coming up through the floorboards, the presence of another person changing even the white noise in the air to something fuller. 

 

In the morning Fred is all face crumpled by the sofa, wrapped up in the blanket and body skittish with morning light and Paul thinks how some people get this all the time _._ He starts to make a pot of tea, sets the kettle to boil, two mugs, milk, sugar. _Some people get this all the time._ It's easy to forget that. Give it enough time and you can forget that. You can forget you're lonely. Forget how much being just one person makes your house echo your own feelings. No one else to break the pattern, stuck in your head. Fred's stirring now, groaning and turning over.

'Can't believe you let us fall asleep on your sofa, mate -’ he says, rattling through all the clag in his throat.

'Aye well I wasn't gonna call you a taxi at three am and kick you out, was I?

Fred grunts.

When Paul brings the tea over Fred’s mostly upright, sat rubbing his eyes. Paul puts the mugs down on the coffee table and startles himself by leaning over and kissing Fred’s forehead, his eyebrow, a little shocked jump of muscle under his lips. 

‘Alright?’ Fred says smiling at him and Paul smiles too, starts to laugh at himself and Fred’s dragging him down on to the sofa, big hands on Paul’s body until they’re laid face to face on it. Fred rubs his nose against Paul’s, _c’mon it’s too early, mate,_ he mumbles, pressing his face to Paul’s shoulder, kissing his neck and it’s all coming apart now. The familiar feel of Fred’s body, Paul’s hand pushing up under his t-shirt. Their bodies notching into place, collapsing. Rumpled clothes and just a bit too hot under the heavy wool blanket. Paul kisses Fred’s temple, Fred mumbling something. Some people get this all the time. Warm skin and sleep drifting back in from the periphery, all that safety in familiarity, Fred’s breath steadying and Paul’s slipping into time. Paul shifts and turns carefully in Fred’s arms, back to Fred’s chest. Dust motes catch and settle in the sun from the window, the steam rises from the cups until it becomes indistinguishable from the air around it. The tea gets colder and Fred falls asleep again, arms tight around Paul. Outside the cows are back in their field, in the watery sunlight and the grass almost too green. The sofa is not big enough for two grown men. Paul’s eyes close. It’s true, it’s too early. They can get up later. Later he can heat the stewed tea in the microwave. Later, when Fred wakes. Later, in the kitchen he can kiss Fred against a countertop. Or tomorrow. He’ll ask him to stay and he’ll kiss him tomorrow. Tomorrow. There’s still time. 

**Author's Note:**

> Part of this was originally a b-day fic for my girl [lordsanga](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lordsanga/pseuds/lordsanga)
> 
> Combing my love of dads and dad music, the titles of the third and seventh section are from Sweet Thing by Van Morrison, the second is from Electrolite by REM and the fifth from Paris 1919 by John Cale.
> 
> [labonnetouche](http://archiveofourown.org/users/labonnetouche/pseuds/labonnetouche) also enables me :))))


End file.
